Truths, Lies and Tennis Statistics / Matthew Walton / 18 February 2009 /

Matthew Walton sets about dispelling the myth of early season shocks and tells us why we sould be backing the experienced players at this time of year.

Many form students will tell you that early in a sporting season - whether it's football, horseracing, cricket, rugby or Formula 1 - you get unexpected results.

The classic cliché comes out that the 'form hasn't settled down yet' which invariably means that they're losing money and need something to blame it on!

And, to be perfectly honest, there is some truth in this opinion and data can be produced to support such a claim when a variety of sports are considered.

However, last week, in the latest round of ATP Tour events we saw victories for Andy Murray (Rotterdam), Tommy Robredo (Costa Do Sauipe) along with Radek Stepanek (San Jose) and whilst none of them were the tournament favourite, all were experienced previous tour winners with clear market claims. None could be viewed as a 'shock' winner.

This meant from the 12 events so far contested in 2009, all 12 had been won by previous tournament winners. What's more all were seeds for their respective events (four were No.1 seeds and three were seeded No.2 as well as two players who were seeded No.3, two at No.4 and one No.8 seed).

Question is, does this 'myth' about the dubious nature of early season form really hold water when it comes to tennis?

Well, the roll of honour for this year does read as an impressive list - Murray (2), Cilic (2), Stepanek (2), Del Potro, Nalbandian, Gonzalez, Nadal, Robredo and Tsonga. What's more, all 12 players either have been, or are, in the top ten of the world rankings (Cilic isn't at the moment but he soon will be).

So when pundits have pointed to players such as Ernests Gulbis, Eduardo Schwank, Viktor Troicki even Jeremy Chardy as potential winners of some of these early season tournaments, the formbook has offered little in terms of support.

Our research then took us back over the preceding five years on the ATP Tour to look at the results of the first wave of events which take place between the start of the season and the next major landmark, the Masters Series events in Miami and Indian Wells. These events represent a quarter of the whole season and provide a very interesting sample of data from which to fully investigate this topic of discussion.

Looking back to last year there were 18 tour events prior to Indian Wells. Of these only three tournaments were won by first-timers (Nishikori in Delray Beach, Stakhovsky in Zagreb and Querrey in Las Vegas) and 15 were won by what you might term 'seasoned professionals'.

Back in 2007 it was only two (Gilles Simon in Marseille and Juan Monaco in Buenos Aires) and in 2006 it was three (Jarkko Nieminen in Auckland, Radek Stepanek in Rotterdam and Luis Horna in Acapulco).

It happened just once in 2005 with Wayne Arthurs in Scottsdale and three times in 2004 (Antony Dupuis in Milan, Joachim Johansson in Memphis and Vincent Spadea in Scottsdale).

That comes to a total of 101 tournaments over the past six seasons of which a mere 12 were won by tour maidens. That makes it around [8.50] for any random event to be won by a first time winner during this first phase of the tennis campaign.

Furthermore, when we look at the type of players who are winning these events, in terms of seeds we find, as we saw above, that all dozen winners were indeed seeded in the draw.

Gong back over previous years the record reads 12/18 in 2008, 14/18 in 2007, 12/18 in 2006, 16/18 in 2005 and 11/17 in 2004.

That makes for 77 of the 101 events being won by seeded players.

Not that impressive? You might think so but be aware that some of those 24 unseeded winners were in fact themselves multiple tour winners in their own right - such as Michael Llodra, Dmitry Tursunov, Guillermo Canas, Radek Stepanek, Joachim Johansson and Dominik Hrbaty (who won three times in early 2004 and was unseeded on every occasion!).

The point being that in a field of 32 - or 128 at the Australian Open - there are often 10 or maybe 12 players deserving of seeded status but, Melbourne aside, the tournament committees can only choose 8 players worthy of a seeding. You will always find quality players winning events when they are unseeded ... there's only so many spots to go round.

As for the reasons behind this general phenomenon, we can speculate as to any number of possible causes.

The close season, at a little over six weeks, is very short. And with the top players being the last ones to finish in the Masters Cup they actually have less time to 'go off the boil' than other, lesser players.

Also, some of these early season events are in more extreme conditions - South America, India, Australia - where, quite possibly, a more experienced performer might well acclimatise and prepare better than the younger players.

Key also could be the scheduling of the Australian Open. Falling so early in the season players have to be at the top of their game right from the get-go if they want to land the first Slam of the year (something which many top players in the 1970's and 1980's simply ignored and didn't even play Down Under).

Think about it, after Wimbledon there's only the US Open and a couple of Masters Series events left in Cincinnati and Toronto/Montreal - most of the top prizes have already been won, most of the top players have done what they set out to do for the year, most are either injured, fatigued or less than 100% motivated. That's when the lesser players come to the fore (something we'll explore further as the year continues).

For now, the view has to be that early season tennis events are the domain of the seasoned pro's. Guys with previous winning form are usually seeded and fully wound up to start the year on a positive note.

No surprise that all 12 winners so far this year have already won on tour. Experience counts for a lot at this time of year and they are the ones who should get most of your attention on Betfair ... for now!

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